"Second round: all interstellar heavy-artillery ships, saturation fire. Unless a barrel's overload alarm goes off, keep firing!" Marshal Chu Xuan ordered.
Interstellar heavy-artillery ship after interstellar heavy-artillery ship showed what a screen full of beams looked like.
The people at this end of the broadcast saw the sky over there, pitch-black a moment before, turn to daylight in an instant!
Tens of thousands of beams flew toward the hive-race fleet opposite, rekindling the flames that had only just died down.
One round after another.
Though their power could not match the interstellar missiles' before, under so long an attack they cleared out a great stretch of space by sheer force.
"Why not use staggered fire? Firing like this, won't they actually be short of firepower while they wait afterward?" a military buff said, puzzled.
"Staggered fire cover does make sense. But you have to look at the actual situation too. Look at it now: with every interstellar heavy-artillery ship laying down saturation fire, the hive-race fleet opposite is only just being held down. If you split this intensity of fire into three, could you still get the effect you're getting now?" said an old man beside him who looked like a veteran.
"Then what happens next?" someone asked, worried again in spite of himself.
"Then we just take it one step at a time," the veteran said.
The interstellar heavy-artillery ships' more than ten minutes of saturation fire stopped.
A great stretch of the hive-race fleet's front-line area had been cleared out.
But the hive-race fleets behind came sweeping in once more.
In under ten minutes, the area cleared before was filled in again by a dark mass of hive-race fleets.
"Interstellar heavy-artillery ships, pull back, cool your barrels and weapon systems, and wait for further combat orders. Interstellar drone swarms, launch; all other interstellar warships, make ready for battle. Once enemy units come into range, fire at will! Hold this defense line; behind us is our Fierce Dragon civilization's home! If this system falls, the next system may be your home!" Marshal Chu Xuan roared.
The hundred thousand Fierce Dragon-line interstellar warships present stood ready in full array, prepared for the most savage clash yet to come.
Zhao Chen, the Fierce Dragon Emperor, was at this moment behind the battle line, watching the battlefield relay before him.
His hands were clasped beneath his chin, his expression grave.
He had been through many battles with the hive-race, and he knew very well how brutal fighting the hive-race was.
Had his Fierce Dragon fleets not had such powerful firepower, they would surely have paid a heavy price.
And fighting a hive-race fleet came down, more often than not, to which side could not hold out first.
It was as though the Fierce Dragon fleets' net of fire were a dam, and the hive-race fleet the flood the dam held back.
So long as the flood did not crest the dam, it would do the dam no great damage.
But once the flood leaped the dam and burst through it,
the whole dam would be destroyed in an instant.
The hundred thousand and more Fierce Dragon interstellar warships before him were in the same position.
So long as they could hold out, the losses would not be too heavy.
But once they could not, the result might be that these hundred thousand and more interstellar warships would be swept away by the hive-race fleet in a few short hours of fighting, without a single ship left.
Battlefield scenes like that, Zhao Chen had seen in a great many battlefield records.
And this was the first battle of this hive-race crisis.
A great deal hung on it.
Not only were the Fierce Dragon civilization's people all watching, with the life or death of three systems at stake; even the remaining six Fierce Dragon systems were watching.
If you lost this time, or won it badly,
the people of the other systems would grow anxious, and would think that perhaps they too had no future.
In that state of mind,
life and work would both run into enormous problems.
If a crowd of people had to worry whether they would be alive tomorrow, do you think they could still work efficiently?
The answer was naturally obvious.
Then there was the matter of morale within the Fierce Dragon civilization's fleets.
In the Fierce Dragon fleets now, more than ninety-nine percent of the crews were recruited natives.
Though they had been trained, and quite a few had even been through one or two real battles,
their will to fight fell far short of the Fierce Dragon's original crew-soldiers, above all where morale was concerned.
In fighting hive-race fleets, morale mattered all the more.
It would directly affect a great many things.
So for this first battle, the hundred thousand and more interstellar warships Zhao Chen had brought out looked like a casual choice, but were in fact the elite of the elite of all the Fierce Dragon legion fleets.
And this was so that the other Fierce Dragon fleets would see it.
Look: those hive-race fleets that blot out the sky are not impossible to destroy.
That way, morale could be founded for those fleets.
If this battle were lost, the effect would be like falling dominoes, dragging in the whole of the Fierce Dragon civilization's system.
Zhao Chen kept his eyes on the state of the interstellar battlefield.
He was waiting for a result!
The interstellar drone swarms had already charged into the hive-race fleet opposite.
Every kind of weapon was brought to bear.
Once all their missiles and explosives were spent, these interstellar drone swarms prepared to withdraw, return to their motherships for resupply, and make ready for the next round of attack.
Any that found they could not make it back would start a suicide-attack program, hurling their own airframes at the hive-race fleet opposite as one last shell!
"Report. Our interstellar stealth reconnaissance ships have finished scanning the total numbers of this hive-race wave. So far we have destroyed over thirty percent of this hive-race wave's combat units; seventy percent remain!" Secretary Officer Barbara, beside him, delivered a vital piece of news.
Seventy percent remained!
Though seventy percent was still enormous,
it at least proved that these hive-race fleets were not endless.
"There's hope!" A look of expectation showed on Zhao Chen's face.
He was waiting for his Grand Marshal to bring him news of a great victory.
On the front-line battlefield, interstellar warships of every kind had opened fire as well.
Interstellar battleships and interstellar battlecruisers, with their long-range firepower, opened fire first.
They cleared away the Hive Motherships first.
And those Hive Motherships were finding ways to strike back, too; beams from their bug-plasma cannons came lancing over.
The interstellar frigates, long since standing ready, opened their star-shield matrices and intercepted these attacks!
"Seal off every sector tight. This twelve-yard defense zone: hold every inch of it for me!" Marshal Chu Xuan stared at the interstellar war holo-table before her.
On the interstellar war holo-table, beyond the defense line,
twelve dividing lines could be seen.
This was the twelve-yard defense line Marshal Chu Xuan had defined.[1]
The requirement was that every yard of the line be defended with all one's strength.
If one sector had been pushed into too far by the enemy, it had to be retaken!
With the lines drawn this way, wherever trouble arose could be seen at a glance.
It was not that Marshal Chu Xuan would not allow these sectors to fall; it was that any loss had to be bought at a price, not given up for nothing.
Time passed bit by bit.
In the people's eyes were the Fierce Dragon interstellar warships on the front-line battlefield, still holding the defense line without let-up.
The officers aboard those interstellar warships were each giving their all; this was a battlefield they were willing to lay down their lives for.
At the rear,
the Fierce Dragon Emperor Zhao Chen held command right here; even when people urged him, he did not choose to fall back.
For this battle was vital.
It had to be won!
"Report. The hive-race fleet opposite is down to its last thirty percent. Some sectors of our twelve-yard defense line are down to their last three yards. Some hive-race combat units have even torn through our defenses and are closing on our interstellar warships!" the adjutant reported anxiously to Marshal Chu Xuan.
"Thirty percent left. Pass the order to every starship. From this moment, every evacuation plan previously set is canceled. I mean to wipe out every one of these bugs right here. I want victory, and I want a great victory! If any fleet disgraces itself, I'll settle accounts with it!" Marshal Chu Xuan said decisively.
"Yes!"
As this order was passed down,
officers and men at every level felt the hope of victory, and knew too that the final hand-to-hand fighting had come.
A good many interstellar warships had used up their interstellar missiles.
The interstellar frigates' star-shield matrices were beginning to show gaps as well, and could no longer keep up a full defense.
On the carrier starships, interstellar fighters long since made ready all took off.
"Listen up, all of you. We sent the interstellar drones in before because we worried about your casualties. But now these bugs have flown right over our starships' heads. They mean to attack our interstellar warships under our very noses. Ever since the day our Fierce Dragon fleets got carrier starships, no one has dared show off in front of our Fierce Dragon fighter wings where interstellar air superiority is concerned. Shoot down every one of these vermin!"
"Yes!"
Fierce Dragon interstellar fighters of every model took off one after another.
On their own ground, they destroyed every bug that had charged inside the battle line.
Some bugs had even latched onto the interstellar warships' hull armor, eating into it with their corrosive fluids and tearing at it with their mouthparts.
Interstellar fighters and interstellar combat mecha gave fire support one after another.
At the same time, inside these interstellar warships,
squad after squad of fully armed interstellar marines aimed their weapons at the ceilings above their heads.
They had already been told.
Right at this spot, bugs were trying to bore their way in.
Once a bug got in, they would be this interstellar warship's last line of defense.
If the bugs were left to wreak havoc inside the starship, the result could be imagined!
Unless every one of them died here, they would never let such a thing happen!
————
"This is Fierce Dragon News. At zero hour Fierce Dragon Time today, the border defense line of the Fierce Dragon Ninth System was attacked by the calamity hive-race. Through the dogged fighting of our Fierce Dragon fleets, over a span of three hours and thirty-five minutes, every calamity hive-race unit of that wave was wiped out."
This was a very brief news item; there was not even much reporting or coverage played up around it.
So much so that many people who had been looking forward to the news report could only go online and search for the relevant systems themselves.
If you asked them,
a news story like this ought to have had an exclusive interview.
It would be a guaranteed hit.
But Fierce Dragon News had actually spent only a dozen-odd seconds slipping this item in.
It left everyone, who had been ready for a big feast, having caught only a whiff of the aroma before the place shut its doors for the day.
However, sorted out by all kinds of people among the public, the relevant reports and material were soon laid before everyone.
What everyone cared about came down to a few points: had there been any lives lost in this battle,
had there been any losses, and so on.
And the results they found left many unable to believe it; some even turned around and investigated several times over.
First of all, the lives lost.
For all those who gave their lives in the Fierce Dragon civilization's fleets were, once counted, made public on a dedicated website, and their families were notified at the earliest moment.
Everyone knew the whole process.
On this point the Fierce Dragon fleets had never once concealed a loss.
And in this battle, of the hundred thousand and more Fierce Dragon interstellar warships, not a single one had actually been destroyed outright.
Only seven interstellar warships of different models, their hulls badly damaged by the hive-race in ways that would affect later combat, needed to go back to dock for a major refit for the time being.
As well as the ordinary problems that turned up to some degree on other interstellar warships: overheated barrels, overloaded launch units and the like.
As for casualties, since no interstellar warship had been destroyed,
the casualty figure would naturally not be large.
But when they found the figure through their own investigation, they still could not believe it.
A total of one hundred thirty-nine lives lost.
Forty-seven of them were interstellar marines.
Thirty-two were combat-mecha pilots, and all the rest were interstellar fighter pilots.
There were no reports of crew lost at any other post.
This fit everyone's impression of these three posts with their high death rates.
But one hundred thirty-nine lost: in the old days, a single armed gang brawl would likely have killed more people than that.
This made some who did not believe it keep digging.
And they really did turn up a little more.
Besides those who had died,
there were also some with light or serious wounds,
numbering around six hundred and some.
As to why the figure was "around":
some people's injuries were hard to assess. Suppose, during the battle, you were in too much of a hurry, tripped and fell: did that count as being wounded?
Or, in the fighting, the interstellar warship took a collision, and in the jolting you split your own head open: did that count as being wounded?
These were all hard to say.
So the Fierce Dragon civilization's internal figure was simply six hundred and some.
At that, the network exploded.
And some people understood why the Fierce Dragon civilization's officials had not given this battle in-depth coverage.
For how could they report it?
If this data were presented by them,
would the public believe it?
Very likely a great many people would stand up at once and say the data was faked, and surely padded.
It was precisely because they had foreseen such a thing happening.
Since you won't believe what we put out ourselves, then simply let you investigate every figure from this battle for yourselves.
When it's you who found it, you can hardly turn around and say the data is fake.